It seems unreal to be writing about Rose in this way, surrounded as I am by her paintings, all of which speak of the joy she found in living. It is difficult to believe that she has gone but she died peacefully in her sleep on Tuesday 19th March.
Rose had shown regularly at Messum’s since the late 1990’s. Exhibition time with us was always ‘party-time’ for Rose. On one occasion, she did not feel she was looking quite her best and I remember her rushing down to Bond Street to reappear in a wonderful flowing gown, which made her quite the centre of attention at her Private View!
I was a frequent visitor to Cornwall in the 1970s and 80s searching for Newlyn School paintings as well as new talent for our stable. When her husband Roger Hilton, the famous British abstractionist artist, died in 1975, Rose became free to practise her own art which had been supressed during his lifetime and it was shortly after that she joined our gallery. Her exhibitions with us developed from tentative Post-Impressionist subjects to full colour plane pictures and in this confident mode, the paintings grew in both size and ambition. She had found her own voice, ‘celebrating everyday life with variety, freshness and a pre-eminent generosity of spirit’ as Andrew Lambirth, the art critic, recorded. An exhibition at Tate St. Ives ‘The Beauty of Ordinary Things’ followed in 2008.
My trips to her home at Botallack, near St. Just; the cliff top walks; tea in the conservatory
where so many of her great paintings were conceived; the discovery of a rolled-up canvas beneath a work bench that turned out to be a masterpiece – ‘Do you think it’s OK?’ she would say ‘I’m never certain’; her charcoal signatures and the titles we used to ponder over are now but a memory. Dinner afterwards at the Gurnard’s Head was always special. I thank you Rose for all of those wonderful moments.
She was cherished by all who knew her and she will be greatly missed. Her popularity and recognition of her work continues.
A wonderful obituary for Rose Hilton.